Last week markets continued in general to be on the back foot, particularly China, while global cyclicals remained strong.

Global markets experienced a mixed week, as Fitch cut the US government's credit rating, while earnings were resilient.

Markets were again flat to slightly positive last week which means that, barring an overnight mishap in the Northern Hemisphere, most equity portfolios will be up another 2-3% for the month.

Last week was uneventful and markets have been more or less flat for the last 10 days, with the exception of the UK, which rallied on the news that inflation was not as high as expected (though still higher than most places), plus some of the economic data has not been quite as dire as has been expected.

Most markets were up last week and while tech stocks and AI beneficiaries continued to lead the way the rally was more broad-based than we have seen recently, with most sectors and markets up by 2 - 5%.

Last week we saw some volatility creep into markets as we turned the page on a new financial year. US labour data was mixed but just strong enough to suggest that higher rates might be around for a bit longer. This caused some volatility in bond markets, with short term (2 year) rates up again and hitting 15-year highs.

Hopes of a soft economic landing permeated markets last week and even the hapless UK market caught a bid late in the week, leaving it up a percent along with the ASX, while Europe, Japan and he US ended the quarter on a high note, up by 2-3%.

We had intended to retire the AI but following some quite positive feedback (which we don’t usually get) it gets a reprieve.

US inflation moderated, the Federal Reserve temporally paused its rate hiking cycle while consumer sales and sentiment gauges firmed. On the face of it, this looks like an immaculate ‘disinflation’, and the dominant narrative in the press is that a resilient US consumer has fanned hopes of a soft landing.